For AMD Users, Linux 4.2 Will Bring The New AMDGPU Driver & VCE1 For Radeon

[Pontostroy]

I did a little comparison VCE 1 vs VCE 2. The results were similar

http://www.gearsongallium.com/?p=2276

[Kraut]

Additionally the Windows drivers are still really bad it seems – and I'm still bound to fire it up once in a time.

Well that is simply not true. People seem to stuck in the time when ATI actually hat pretty terrible drivers. (People also seem to forget that NVidia hat some big drivers bugs, including damaged GPUs...)
In the last few years I can not recall any problems with the windows drivers, except in new games. And this where always fixed with a simple driver update.

The only negative thing I could find about the 280/290 series is the higher RMA quota.

[AnonymousCoward]

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Catalyst will continue improving with both AMDGPU and their blob kernel driver for older cards.

Well there was some report that catalyst will move to amdgpu kernel driver only with 4xx series cards. So even if 3xx will be rebranded it will still use old kernel driver

[xeekei]

Well there was some report that catalyst will move to amdgpu kernel driver only with 4xx series cards. So even if 3xx will be rebranded it will still use old kernel driver

No, they've said all future GPUs will use the new driver, plus R9 285. Whether that means that rebrands of anything except Tonga is excluded I don't know. I do know that the R9 390X will be a new GPU though.

I guess people will have to make sure before buying a card for the next gen.

[Guest]

Additionally the Windows drivers are still really bad it seems – and I'm still bound to fire it up once in a time.

They were fine last I checked on 15.4, and even the Windows 10 TP driver wasn't too bad (a bit unstable with GTA V when I tried it, but not surprising; supposedly the driver itself is better with DX11 games overall though).

[entropy]

Well that is simply not true. People seem to stuck in the time when ATI actually hat pretty terrible drivers. (People also seem to forget that NVidia hat some big drivers bugs, including damaged GPUs...)
In the last few years I can not recall any problems with the windows drivers, except in new games. And this where always fixed with a simple driver update.

I can also confirm that the Windows drivers (Direct3D) worked fantastic for my Radeon HD 4850 and now Radeon HD 7950.
However, the shared OpenGL part seems to be lacking performance wise as well on Windows.
It's just the Linux driver that's still far from what the hardware is capable to provide.

[darkbasic]

Well there was some report that catalyst will move to amdgpu kernel driver only with 4xx series cards. So even if 3xx will be rebranded it will still use old kernel driver

Source? Can someone from AMD confirm?

[dungeon]

Source? Can someone from AMD confirm?

They can't talk about unreleased product. But yes someone said catalyst will move later on once things are settled up. That might mean even 6xx

According to wikipedia 3xx series are OEMs, Fiji will be R9 490/X One never knows with those unreleased products, they have a right and might change naming scheme entirely .

[nadro]

I would buy new Tonga revision (3xx), but it still not clear for me if future Catalyst versions will use the new AMDGPU for Tonga based cards. I know that OSS drivers for Tonga use AMDGPU, but I don?t see any information about Tonga + proprietary drivers.

[bridgman]

I think the confusion here comes from "when amdgpu hybrid drivers will happen" vs "what hardware they will support". Hybrid drivers using amdgpu will probably arrive in what you call the 4xx timeframe (whatever the heck that is, we don't talk about 3xx vs 4xx internally) but are expected to support what you call 3xx and up. So Tonga, CZ, Fiji and up.

That said, remember that the main hybrid focus is still going to be 3D workstation so emphasis will be on the chips that become FirePro products -- we are continuing to add resources to the all-open stack development efforts for other markets. I think you will like what we are doing.